Security Architectures

A system is only as secure as its weakest link. In order to efficiently secure a system as a whole, it is not only necessary to work on securing the components of a system individually. It is necessary to devise an overall security architecture that exploits synergies between different security measures and that connects them seamlessly and efficiently. The overall goal is to achieve the highest level of security for the system at the lowest costs and to have a set of security measures that can also be verified efficiently.

Our research focuses on security architectures for devices that can be attacked physically. Many embedded devices in the Internet of Things operate in environments, where attackers have physical access to the devices. We are working on hardware as well as software countermeasures that allow securing the assets in these devices.
We are in particular working on

Hardware extensions for security

Compilers that insert security measures into software automatically

Secure operating systems

Selected Research Topics

Memory Encryption

Off-chip memory is an easy target because of the exposed interconnections. The regular structure of an on-chip memory eases attacks using lasers or photon emission scanners. We aim for low-latency memory encryption schemes for on- as well as off-chip memories and we aim for providing security in the presence of side-channel and fault attacks on the encryption/decryption unit.

Control-flow and Data Integrity

Most security assumptions fail if it cannot be assured that a processor actually executes the software as it was intended to execute. Certificate or password checks do not work reliably, if a check can for example be skipped by faulting the processor. We are working on control-flow enforcement technologies as well as on data integrity measures in order to secure the execution of software against logical as well as physical attacks.